tragic night in Guatemala

Dear Friends:

With heavy hearts we would like to share with you the reasons why Guatemala should be in your prayers again.  We are at the middle of the rainy season and the heaviest of the rain is yet to come in November. Nevertheless it has already rained a lot and the ground has already absorbed a lot of water. 

Last October the 1^st, at 9:30 pm we faced the first disaster related with the rain in this year, a huge mudslide, in an area pretty close to the city.  El Cambray 2 is a small village located at the base of a mountain near Guatemala City.  This community was completely vanished in a matter of seconds as the big mountain collapsed over them. This was a small community of about 125 houses, families of about 5 to 7 members in each household.  At the moment of the landslide they lived terrible moments because many of them were trapped in their houses under the rubble sending text messages on their phones, asking for help.

This is just one of many sad stories that we have been hearing: Maria is a taxi driver. At 9:00 pm, after a long day of work, her grownup son asked her to go get some pizza in a nearby place to celebrate her grandson’s birthday; her daughter-in-law and granddaughter accompanied her.  While she was on her way back home after getting the pizza she received a phone call from a client asking her to pick him up. She then had to decide between making some extra money and making her family wait for the pizza. She decided to make the trip.  Her decision saved her life but by the time she got back, her neighborhood was gone and she had no idea whether she would be able to see the rest of her family ever again.

At this moment, October 5, 2015 at 7:00 pm, 140 people have been reported dead including a number of children and an approximated 450 are still missing.  A group of rescuers specialized in these kind of disasters came from Mexico to support the work that the firefighters, army and Police Department are doing.  Rescue workers said that after 72 hours the possibilities of finding somebody alive are very low but they still are working very hard to find someone or to recover all loved ones from the mud.

Please, we are asking you to keep us in your prayers especially because CONRED [National Commission for Disaster Reduction] announced that there are at least another 300 communities facing the same kind of risk in our country and as It was said before, the hardest of the rainy season is still yet to come.